


black dog

by bombcollar



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Conspiracy, Drama, Family Fluff, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 03:24:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3713020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bombcollar/pseuds/bombcollar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leslie tells you his nightmares in fragments like broken teeth, of cold metal beneath his skin, the black smell of bile and the taste of dirty fingers in his mouth, of rough, unkind hands around his arms and neck. Vein purple and artery crimson and gray skin streaked with the creeping red fingers of infection. Split, oozing stitches and colorless eyes, pus pooled beneath bandages and bruised ribs like ripples in sand. Wire splitting skin and harsh slatted lights in the darkness. He turns Myra’s beads, clinking them against the silver medical bracelet that bears his name. -// Postgame. Sebastian takes Leslie in and very quickly realizes things aren't over yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	black dog

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to write fluff and then a plot happened.  
> This was a good practice in demonstrating love without saying the actual word. title comes from the song that inspired it and anything else i manage to think of is just too pretentious. make what meaning of it you will.  
> (warning for very brief mentions of sexual assault.)  
> EDIT: Since I've finished watching The Consequence, I'm aware that there are some things in this that it contradicts. I'm just going to leave them in until I find a way to rewrite them.  
> 

Psych says take a month off. Things to sort out, stains to mop up, stories to weave for easy public digestion. _Fine_ , you say. More time to work on personal projects.

-

There’s the matter of the patient. Joseph has his own family to worry about. Kidman’s vanished. Only so many options. Another facility could take him, but God knows what could happen behind closed doors. Even the thought of more banal evils sickens you.

 _He can stay with me_ , you hear yourself say, in spite of your better judgment. You live alone. It’ll be adequate until they can find him a better care facility. He has as little hand in this as you yet somehow you feel responsible. You’ll take him to the doctor, get him whatever they tell you he needs, but he stays with you. This is acceptable.

-

Clear the empty bottles, crack the shutters, let the thin sunlight filter into the apartment and lay slats of harsh white on the old floorboards and beaten couch. The place is small. Enough for one man and his vices. The tapes you’ve been reviewing are in disarray, their shiny brown guts in hopeless tangles.

Lamely you mumble some apology about the mess, never mind that you still recall the squelch of brain matter and offal beneath your feet. What’s a dirty apartment compared to catacombs carpeted with corpses. He doesn’t say much in return, repeating your sorries to himself.

-

It’s late.The spare room is bare except for the bed and dresser, painted a quiet gray-blue, indistinct faded patches on the walls as if they’d been decorated at one point, before you began living here. Perhaps a nursery. The nightlight in the hall peers curiously through the doorway. _You can sleep here_ , you tell him.

-

_Can... can Leslie go home?_

It’s exactly the question you were hoping he’d wait to bring up with the psych, rather than here and now under the flickering kitchen fluorescents as you wait for dinner to heat up. The nutritionist gave you a list of things to prepare to help him recover from the abysmal nourishment he’d received at Beacon, but TV dinners are all you’ve got at the moment.

 _Not yet_ , you tell him. _We’ve gotta get in contact with your parents. Find out where they went._

If they even want him anymore. You don’t leave your child in a place like that when you plan on taking them back someday.

The answer seems to satisfy him. He looks down, shaky fingers picking at a hole in the tablecloth. His bruises have begun to recede, the delicate skin beneath his eye faded to sickly yellow from red-purple.

-

You’re woken in the night by ice-cold fingers and ragged nails clutching your shoulders and you nearly smash your elbow into his face.

 _Sorry_ , you tell him, only for him to pick it up, as he does.

_Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry._

You’re sure he is, even if he shouldn’t be. _Go back to bed, Leslie. You have your own bed._

_Bed. Sorry. Sorry. Go to bed._

-

Therapist the next day. You bide your time alone in the waiting area, smoking as you page through years-old magazines. There’s no sound from the other room and you suppose that’s a good sign.

When it’s over you ask him how it went. He keeps his eyes on the passing scenery outside the car, fingers turning the beads of the bracelet he found in your drawer. It had been Myra’s. God knows why you still had it. The motion seems to soothe him though, so you let him keep it without protest. When he doesn’t answer you, you fall quiet, looking forward at the road.

-

Evening. Your hands shake but you can’t smoke around him. Doctor’s orders. Can’t keep going back outside when you’ve got to keep yourself focused. Endless scans of yellowed records, the names of thugs you’ll never remember.

The scoot of wooden legs against your worn carpet gets you to unclench your shoulders, and a sharp ache between them suggests you’ve been hunched up like that too long. Leslie’s pulled the footstool over to your desk, eyes down as he sits next to you. You ask him what he needs but he just shakes his head, so you let him be, returning to your work.

Your right index finger taps your desk as you do your best to ride out your jitters. It’s useless. All files are digitized now, and the ones you managed to pull off the KCPD’s database are old, possibly outdated. These men and women could be dead for all you know. You’re wasting your time but it’s all you have.

Cool fingertips close over yours, stilling your staccato. Leslie wraps your hand in both of his, drawing it close to his chest, one held over and one held under, like you might hold a rabbit. His palms are soft but nicked with scars, nails bitten short and jagged. He runs his fingers over your gun calluses like he did with the beads in small, careful motions. You’re about to gently remind him you need both your hands, but the serenity on his face stops you. His lids slipped half-closed over his pale eyes, smiling faintly. Not like the sly glance he’d given you in what you still pray was a hallucination.

-

As strongly as you insist he stay in his own bed, you still jolt awake when you feel his cold toes touch the backs of your calves. He curls up, just barely touching your back, knees drawn up to his chest, his breath shaky. Reminds you of the cat you and Myra used to have. She’d lie on the bed right where you wanted to stretch your legs out, but you rarely had the heart to remove her.

 _Please go sleep in your own bed, Leslie_ , you mumble into your pillow. When you hear the rustle of him shaking his head no, you sit up, slowly so as not to alarm him.

 _Leslie_. What did the therapist say? Figuring out what words to use was difficult for him. You had to give him ones he could build his answers with. _Leslie. Look at me._

He looks, watery gray eyes flickering up to meet yours.

 _Do you not like your bed, Leslie? Is it uncomfortabl_ e _?_

That gets a head shake no.

_Are you cold? Do you need another blanket?_

No.

_Are you having nightmares?_

He hesitates on that one. Not surprising. It’s been less than a week. The bitter copper reek of old blood still sticks in your throat, along with all manner of myriad phantom aches from the punishment you took inside the STEM. Honestly you should’ve been tipped off that something was wrong when being thrown through a concrete wall didn’t do much more than inconvenience you.

Leslie had been out of your sight for much of it. God knew what he’d been through, what he’d seen.

 _Fine_ , you relent, not meaning to sound so resigned, but it’s 1 in the morning and you haven’t slept well since you hauled yourself out of that nightmare bath tub. Frankly, you haven’t slept well in a very long time. _You can sleep here tonight. But you need to use your own bed eventually._

You lie back down, keeping still as he settles in parallel, his back against yours, sharp vertebrae prodding you through his nightshirt. Reminds you to get to the grocery store tomorrow.

-

In spite of what you told the doctors, your coworkers, and your boss, you never went into this laboring under the delusion that you fully knew what you were doing, and that this was definitely the best option. So when you have to drag him to a quiet corner of the store in the midst of a panic attack, holding his shoulders so he doesn’t thrash around and hurt himself, hushing his sobs and panicked repetitions, you’re not surprised. It was too early to bring him out here. You should have known. Maybe you just wanted him where you could see him.

You’ll try again another time.

-

Next time you take him out, he clasps your hand in his like he’s going to disappear if he lets go.

-

Another night. Two weeks have passed, two weeks of slow adjustment, of medication that doesn’t leave him numb to the point of catatonia, of rest for you both. Seeing to Leslie’s needs leaves less time to endlessly pore over your notes and let your doubts gnaw at the edges of your brain. You take him to the doctor, to his therapist, to the park while school is still in session and you won’t have to deal with any concerned mothers dragging their children away from him.

He’s in his place that evening, leaned up against you, holding your arm and running his fingers lightly across your wrist. It catches you off guard when he speaks.

_Who are they?_

The laptop screen paints his face a ghostly blue-white as he peers at the scrolling text and neat grid of mugshots.

 _Criminals,_ you tell him. _People we arrested._

_Arrested..._

_Put away. In prison._

_Put away, why... why’re you looking at them?_

Your gaze lingers on the jpg face of a man who was currently serving life for raping and murdering a teenage boy.

_Just trying to figure something out, Leslie. Don’t worry about it._

_Don’t worry._

_That’s right. Focus on getting better._

-

He still won’t stay in his bed, but you’ve stopped trying to make him. Instead he sleeps with his spine lined up with yours, knees tucked in, arms held to his chest. You sleep soundly most of the time, but the urge to make it sounder still raises its ugly, thirsty little head.

-

You meet with Joseph one evening when he’s off duty, conspicuously ordering water when the waitress asks what you’d like to drink. He tries to hide his smile with his steepled fingers but you give him a disapproving frown and grunt at him not to patronize you.

_No, I’m not, I swear. I’m happy, honestly, he tells you. After everything that happened, I kind of... I hate to admit it but I wouldn’t blame you if you fell back off the wagon for a while. You’d have to be inhuman to not want to burn all that out of your brain with a couple strong drinks._

_Let’s not talk about it._ You sip your water, curling your free fingers beneath the table to keep the tapping from starting again. _How’s things at home?_

 _Right, sorry._ He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. _They’re ah, good, actually. Took a little time off to spend with Naomi and Ana. I think we’d all feel a lot better getting out of the city for a while. Maybe go to the shore. Ana really loves lobster, can you believe that? She’s only 3 and she’s already got expensive tastes._

You chuckle, but you’re sure he’s got something else on the tip of his tongue. Better not keep him waiting. _I know you weren’t wild about the idea of me looking after Leslie but... it’s going better than I thought it would. Not that it could really go any worse._

 _No, I guess it couldn’t._ Joseph leans his chin on the back of his hand, his gaze drifting elsewhere.

_I know when enough is enough. If it ever gets to the point where I can’t handle it..._

_I didn’t say anything about that, Seb. I know you’ll do the right thing._

_I guess._ You rest your hand on your face. _I know it... what happened wasn’t my fault. But I feel like I’m getting a second chance. I want to do well. Maybe that’s selfish, because I know if I don’t, it’s not me who’s going to be paying for it. But it’s not... it’s not unfair to want to try, is it?_

_No, no. I don’t think so._

_Thanks, Joseph._

-

When he doesn’t want to be close while you work, Leslie sits in his bedroom, covers pulled up over his head and your fat old sound-muffling headphones over his ears. You found an old discman in your many boxes of things from before and gave it to him, along with a book of old CDs you no longer cared to listen to. He hums along tunelessly to himself but you can never bring yourself to ask him to quiet down.

-

Doctor’s office waiting room. The walls are soothing seafoam, decorated with stencils of seashells and photographs of the shore. You drink black coffee from a styrofoam cup and read the newspaper you brought, perusing the latest scandals uncovered by the Beacon investigation. Within a couple weeks they’ll put you back out there, if you’re lucky.

You’ll need to figure out what to do with Leslie in your absence. Find him some support group where he can interact with people like him, but it’s so hard to be sure what’s safe. Plenty of people thought Beacon was a fine establishment at one time.

He emerges smiling shyly to himself, and in the car haltingly tells you how the doctor said he was doing well, getting healthier, his voice soft as if to speak too loudly would frighten away such a nice feeling. The doctor is a kind woman who patiently waits out his stutters, lets him pet one of the docile therapy rabbits as she examines him and tells him how proud she is of him. When you ask him if he wants to go back at the end of the month, he says yes.

-

Leslie tells you his nightmares in fragments like broken teeth, of cold metal beneath his skin, the black smell of bile and the taste of dirty fingers in his mouth, of rough, unkind hands around his arms and neck. Vein purple and artery crimson and gray skin streaked with the creeping red fingers of infection. Split, oozing stitches and colorless eyes, pus pooled beneath bandages and bruised ribs like ripples in sand. Wire splitting skin and harsh slatted lights in the darkness. He turns Myra’s beads, clinking them against the silver medical bracelet that bears his name.

Together on your beaten couch you browse patient files extracted from Beacon. 10 years he’d been in that hole. Attempts to reach his parents at the number and address they’d left had proven fruitless. Friends and neighbors are little help, some expressing that they weren’t aware the Withers even had a son. Their old home sold and no record of them purchasing another. Credit accounts suspended. Like they’d vanished from the face of the Earth. He still asks you if he can go home. How are you supposed to tell him there’s no home left for him to return to?

-

When you take him to the store he only needs one hand to hold onto yours, keeping the other for his beads or one of the small hand-stimulation toys his therapist provided him. He touches the skins of the fruit in the produce section and sometimes other people’s clothing when you don’t catch him quickly enough and tell him to be careful. Sometimes you see him scanning the crowds, only for a moment before it becomes overwhelming and he has to look away.

Admittedly you sometimes find yourself looking for the hooded man, fear pricking your insides when you glimpse someone in a pale hoodie, or who happens to be looking at you a little too intensely for one reason or another. You were reeling between two worlds when you stamped his poor brain into mush on the filthy linoleum, and there’s no telling whether that ended him or not. Perhaps you’ll never know, but you don’t much fancy looking over your shoulder for the rest of your days.

-

They don’t want you back on the Beacon case, which is understandable, and you’re a little relieved for it. You’ve recounted all you can about your experiences, down to the feeling of some mutant’s teeth locking deep into the meat of your shoulder. Your regular cases are more human, if no less ugly.

Near the end of the day the chief asks you to come have a seat in his office. Summer’s bearing down on the city, and the small room is uncomfortably stuffy. You loosen your collar a little. Why not. You’ll be heading some soon.

 _Detective Castellanos_ , he begins. I _t’s my understanding that you’re currently caring for one of the patients from the Beacon catastrophe. We’ve made it very clear in the past how we can’t have people too personally involved in cases like this._

 _I’m not involved,_ you tell him. _I’m driving him to his shrink appointments. They said as long as I kept up with his sessions and let them check up on him every few weeks that it’d be fine. He’s living with me. That’s the limit of my involvement._

 _I understand that, detective, but we need you here. We’ve seen in the past how you can..._ He parts his linked fingers, gesturing vaguely before he continues. _...get wrapped up in these things. Beacon’s being handled. We’ve got more pressing things we need you focused on._

_You don’t think I’m focused enough? I’ve only been back a couple days._

_No, no, it’s not that. More of a preemptive thing. See... You’re looking after the guy, and that’s great. You’re a real saint among men. But there’s better options out there. They got places devoted to that kinda thing. Seeing that he gets everything he needs, helping him become a, y’know, a functional member of society after what he’s been through. You can still go see him, but you’ll be free to focus on your work._

You nod, thumb and forefinger cupping your chin. It’s something you’d considered for sure, but that little worm of doubt still nibbles at you. _I’ll look into it._

His smile broadens. _Thanks, Seb. You got a good head on your shoulders. Do you best to keep it there, and I’ll get you a list go to over with him. See which one he likes best._

-

That night you make hot chocolate for the both of you (dumping a bottle of Ensure into Leslie’s. He still wasn’t gaining much weight and that had you and his doctor concerned) and settle down on the couch with your laptop to review the care facilities the chief had suggested. Leslie leans his head on your shoulder as you click the links and open them unto pages of smiling people and pastel graphics. The sites differ in small ways from one another, all pretty standard fare, all pretty nice-looking places, all within driving distance of the city. You check their reviews. All glowing.

Maybe this would be for the best. Leslie needed a safe, stable place to heal, and you had a job to do. There are lots of people still in need.

You return to the first link, for the closest facility. Open Hands, it’s called. Their contact page lists their address, phone number and email, and near the bottom, a little graphic with a pale blue swirly sun logo. Circle of Caring. Some sort of parent company. It strikes you as familiar somehow.

Curious, you bring up the contact information on the other sites. Some list different parent companies, but a little digging reveals that they all link back to this Circle of Caring place, which itself has only the barest information available. Its site is blank, citing that the page is under revision and will be back up later this year. A few old news articles mention it in reference to charity events, mostly medical-related. Beacon was among the beneficiaries, which alone is enough to make you suspicious. You shouldn’t be. It’s only one of many, and Beacon was a large institution. Still. There’s something about this you just don’t like.

-

_I’m not paranoid, am I, Joseph? Doesn’t it seem strange?_

Work the next day. Newest case is a missing person. Little girl, 5 years old, possibly abducted from a shopping center. Joseph drives.

_Maybe a little? I think it’s just a coincidence though. You know how there are all these big companies that own virtually everything._

_I know that, but the trail just ends. I can’t find out anything else about these guys. Even the care facilities seem too squeaky-clean to be true. Barely a negative review anywhere, no scandals, nobody in the history of these places ever hit a patient? I find that hard to believe. No matter how careful you are the bad apples always slip through._

_You could always go see them for yourself._

_Yeah. But you know what this says to me? Something goes wrong, they either hide it or they ignore it. I promise I’m not gonna start raving about fluoride in the tap water, but this rubs me wrong._

Joseph nods in understanding and you fall quiet, glancing around the interior of the car. It takes you a moment to notice that the radio’s crackle had gone silent in the midst of your ravings. Almost sheepishly it starts up again. You stare out the window as Joseph drives on.

-

Again he asks you about his parents, and you’re as truthful as you can be. _We just can’t find them, Leslie. We don’t know where they are._

_But... home..._

_If you went back to your house there would be nobody there. We don’t know why they left, but we’ll keep looking, Leslie. I promise we’ll do everything we can to find them._

He wants to cry and you let him, arms around his bony back as he shudders, gripping your shirt too tightly, his sobs loud and ragged like he’s being struck with each one that wracks his body. You stroke his hair and the back of his neck and close your eyes tight because you know too well what it’s like, not knowing what you ever did wrong.

When you finally sleep, he lies curled up against your chest with your arm around him, face still sticky with the tears he wouldn’t let you wipe.

He reminds you desperately of Lily. Maybe that’s not a fair comparison to make. Lily was a child. Leslie is a grown adult, albeit one whose needs differ from most people his age. Maybe it’s that raw sadness borne from the sheer incomprehensibility of his situation. Regardless of how old you are, it’s hard to understand why someone you thought loved you would leave and never come back.

-

Later that week, at the therapist’s office. When asked about care facilities she recommends some that are out-of-state, in Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona. Big open states. Lots of hiding places. You bring up this Open Hands joint and she smiles just a bit too stiffly. _I’ve heard that one is fine too._

You want to thank her for making you feel just a little bit less crazy.

-

Last night’s bad dreams were different. No blood or pulped organs spattering the walls. Just cold, clean concrete, endless miles of it. Through vast, thick windows he saw people lying on the floor in rows and rows, hundreds of them. The heavy feeling that everything was going to come down on top of him. A voice urgently repeating phrases he couldn’t understand.

You read to him and let him lay his head in your lap as he turns the beads over and over, until he falls asleep again.

-

The main suspect in the girl’s kidnapping is her father, but his alibi is airtight. You’re mulling over the case notes when the chief calls you back into his stuffy office to ask you if you’d considered any of the care facilities he’d suggested.

 _Yeah_ , you tell him. _I think I might go out of state. Get him away from the city._

_Oh yeah? You seemed so adamant about keeping an eye on him._

_That’s just it. If he goes out of state, I’m coming with him._

_I gotta tell you, detective, you’re taking me by surprise here. You’ve always been one to stick to your guns, talking about how we’re the “thin blue line” and all that poetic stuff. Always something I liked about you_.

You breathe out through your nose, tugging your collar. A ring of sweat has already formed where the fabric touches your skin. _I appreciate the compliment, but nothing’s solid yet. It’s just a possibility at this point._

_We really do need you to make a decision, detective._

_What, I’ve got an ultimatum all of a sudden?_ You try to joke, try to hide your glance back to see if he’s locked the door or not.

_We need you here, detective._

_I_ am _here. I haven’t slipped up since you let me back on the force. I’m keeping my nose out of the Beacon case. Leslie’s fine for now. I got him in a support group thing during the day with his therapy office... You don’t have to worry about me. I’ve got it handled._

_Very well. If everything stays consistent, we’ll look for a more concrete answer from you by... say, the end of next month?_

_Fine. I guess that’s doable._

_Wonderful, detective._ He smiles at you, and it might just be a trick of the light that you see fear in it. _I’ll see you then._

-

When you pick Leslie up, he’s unusually quiet, his wrists and forearms decorated in pale red scratch marks from his fidgeting. You ask him if somebody was making him nervous, and he shakes his head though his hands go very quickly to yours. _Just a bad day_ , says his counselor. _Everybody has them sometimes. Leslie is usually very good._

Back home, he tells you, in so many stuttered words, that there was a man there. Not someone from the regular group, just a man who looked at him askance and spoke softly to the counselor in rooms out of sight. It was too much like the doctors, who talked as if he wasn’t there in one moment, and in honey-slathered words the next, as if that would make the tests hurt less.

You remind him that he does not have to do anything he doesn’t want to. If that man says to come with him, or asks him strange questions, Leslie does not have to go with him, and he doesn’t have to answer. He can be quiet.

_Be quiet._

_Yes. And if he says anything to you, try to remember what it is. You can write it down._

_O-okay. Okay. Write it down._

_Just be careful, Leslie._

-

Yesterday’s events have you shaken, and more than once you have to apologize for snapping at people. There’s photos of the missing girl spread on your desk amid security stills.

Years ago, you’d taken Lily to the park, looked away for only a moment to find her speaking to a man near the outskirts. Maybe it meant nothing, maybe he was just there with a kid of his own and he was just being friendly, but when he meets your demand to know what he’s doing with nervous stammers, you break his nose. It feels too much like that. Like only the crunch of bone beneath your fists will put your mind at ease.

-

Work is uneventful. No new openings in the kidnapping case. Every hour spent without progress means she gets further and further away. Someone accidentally knocks the coffeemaker over and breaks it. Nobody’s willing to own up. You feel too many eyes upon you and spend too much time outside, pinning your notes down with rocks you pick up from the landscaping beds.

The counselor is waiting with folded hands when you arrive at the therapy office. _I’m afraid we’ve had another incident, Mr. Castellanos. Leslie bit one of the visitors so we had to take him out of the group for most of the day._

 _He_ bit _somebody?_

_Not badly. He just got a little overwhelmed, I think, but we got in contact with his doctor and they’d like to schedule another examination. Until then, have you considered a more permanent care facility for him? There’s only so much we can do here._

You feel icy fingers spider their way up your spine but manage to keep your expression neutral. _We’ve been looking into it. Where is he right now?_

She takes you to a quiet room where Leslie waits, his hood pulled up, hiding his face. You kneel in front of him and tell him it’s time to go. He holds your arm as you lead him out, reverting to the awkward duckling waddle he’d used back when you’d chased him through graveyards and tunnels full of gore. On the way you glance around for the man Leslie said he saw, but nobody is watching  you this time.

In the car he shrinks away from you as you buckle his seatbelt. _I’m not mad at you, Leslie, but... why did you bite somebody? Did they try to grab you?_

_Nn..._

_I promise, it’s alright if you got scared. Was it the man again?_

_N... the man, no..._

_Was it the counselor?_

_No, no.... nobody. No. I didn’t bite. I didn’t!_ He clutches the sides of his head, tugging his hood over his face. _Lying! She's lying!!_

 _Okay, it’s okay._ You place your hands on his shoulders so he doesn’t smack his forehead into the dashboard. You’d ask yourself why they’d lie, but you’re sure you already know. He probably wouldn’t be coming back to this particular support group. _We’re going to go home now. It’ll be alright._

-

_Leslie. We need to talk about something._

He peers up at you, and you’re relieved to see he doesn’t flinch as you drop yourself onto the couch beside him. Seems he’d calmed down since the car ride home. _I’m... Things may not be as safe as I thought they were, Leslie._

_Not safe..._

_No, not safe. Right now, you’re only staying with me. Someone else is making the decisions about what doctor you see, what medication you get, and where you live. I know I’ve told them I want you to stay with me, but they can make you leave, and I can’t do anything about it._

He nods, hugging his knees to his chest. Seems like he gets it.

_But, we can do something about that. Because we can’t find your parents, and because you can’t be alone, the state is sort of like your parent right now. It doesn’t have to be, though. I can... adopt you. That would make me your parent. I would be the one who makes those decisions now. Do you understand?_

_Seb is... my parent. Is my dad._

_Yes. Then it would be much harder for them to make you leave. You’re old enough that you can just say yes, that you want to be adopted by me._

_Mom and... and dad..._

You gently take his hands. _If we ever find your real mom and dad, we’ll figure out what to do then, but for now, the most important thing is for you to be safe. You can’t meet them again if you’re not safe._

 _S-safe. Safe. Safe, want to... be safe..._ His fingers tighten around yours _. This will be safe?_

_This will make you safe. Is this what you want? To stay with me so you can be safe?_

_S-s... stay. Yes._

_Okay. We’ll go there tomorrow._

-

Luckily, you’ve got people who owe you favors. At city hall you sit in a records office full of potted plants, in front of a man whose dark hair is flecked with gray in spite of the fact that he’s younger than you are.

It feels like every week there’s another case of falsified records, but hardly anybody cares enough to do much about it. Too many greasy palms. It sits uneasily with you to make yourself part of the problem, but this is for Leslie’s sake. You’re not cheating anybody but the people who’d see him back marinating in that slime.

Leslie’s with you. You don’t dare leave him alone at this point. He strokes the soft, fat leaves of a succulent and murmurs to himself.

 _I need an adoption._ You slide the man a printed copy of Leslie’s birth certificate. In the wake of the massacre all the files were thrown up on the KCPD’s databases. It was no trouble at all to find this one. Leslie Withers, no middle name. Born January 31st 1989. _Adult with special needs. I need it quickly. By the end of the week._

He smiles mildly at your request. _I’ll see what I can do, detective._

You remember his soft, mild face twisted in a grimace of pain and desperation. You’re not supposed to judge. You’re supposed to do as the law tells you, but when his daughter drove to the house of the man who assaulted her and shot him ten times, you just couldn’t help yourself. A little planted evidence made it clear that his was a death that was a long time in coming, and she got to walk free.

He hands you a series of forms, and you show Leslie where to initial in his untidy scrawl. Right now he’ll keep his name the same. There’s plenty of time for him to decide if he wants to change it. Withers-Castellanos is a bit of a mouthful anyway.

 _Thank you very much._ The man smiles as he neatly tucks the forms away. _I’ll see that these get processed as soon as possible. Have a nice day, detective._

-

For the rest of the week, you can’t meet anybody’s eyes at the station. They seem afraid. Not afraid of you. Just afraid.

-

Not long after, the certificate of adoption is mailed back to you. It’s a quiet operation. Little fanfare. You allow yourself some private celebration; when the weekend comes you take Leslie to the small beach not far from the outskirts of the city. He stares out the window at the pine trees hemming in the narrow dirt road, tall and thick enough that you need your headlights to navigate, pointing out every deer you pass.

The beach is small, deserted, hemmed in by the trees. They half-swallow the rickety old picnic tables, long surrendered to the wasps and daddy longlegs and lichen, leaving only a sliver of gray sand between you and the water.

You sit and light a cigarette and watch Leslie wade into the dark water, very thin and very pale against the green-gray. Little silver fish glint between the clouds of silt his footsteps make, so he stands still until they get used to him and come close enough to brush past his ankles. There are tiny black tadpoles and swifts that skim insects off the surface, the fathomless twittering of unseen birds and the soft slosh of tiny swells against the sand. He looks back at you and smiles, and you smile too.

When the sun’s gone down and the woods have grown too dark, you head back. Leslie sleeps with his head cushioned by your folded jacket and you hope to god you don’t see headlights in your rearview.

-

_We’re going away, Leslie._

_Away?_

You’re just about packed. It alarms you how few things you care about enough to take with you.

_Far away. Away from the bad people I told you about. The people who want you for that machine. I have a feeling that we gummed up their works good, but we didn’t stop them. You remember how the counselor lied, how so many people said I should give you up. It makes me think that they’re big. Too big for me to stop, even if I had help. So we’re going to go far away and figure it out from there._

_Away. Away... Seb and Leslie. Going far away._

_That’s right._ You’ve packed his things too. The clothing you bought him. His medication, his documentation. Fake names, fake lives, fake plates. Stability is what he needs, but you won’t find it here. Maybe somewhere out west. You always wanted to return to the desert. To the red rocks and the vortexes. After what you’ve been through you can’t help but wonder if there was something to their cosmic energy all along.

It’s a shame you can’t say goodbye to Joseph. He’s a smart guy, though. You trust him to get out while he still can. Maybe your disappearance will be enough to prompt him, and maybe when you meet again he’ll forgive you.

_We’re going to be driving for a long time. I don’t know where we’ll stop exactly. Somewhere safe._

_Somewhere safe_. He turns her beads in his fingers, rolling them over his scars. They’re all that’s left.

_Yes. Somewhere nobody can hurt us. Where we can find the people we’re missing._

You kiss his forehead and load your bags into the car. The sky is a delicate orange-blue as the city just begins its first murmurings of wakefulness. As you rumble your way out past the city limits, Leslie takes your hand, cradling it to his chest as you both look ahead.

 

 

 


End file.
